Industry is predicting that Serial ATA will be the predominant storage interface, replacing the current interface, Parallel ATA. Design and development engineers, test engineers, production and manufacturing personnel, and others working with storage devices must have a detailed understanding of this new interface. This course provides an in-depth study of the Serial ATA architecture, protocol, commands, and error control. The Serial ATA ll extensions are also studied. Actual Serial ATA traffic is captured and analyzed using CATC’s SATracer to reinforce technical communication concepts presented in the course.

The course is intended for hardware, software, and validation engineers who will be involved with the design, troubleshooting, integration, and maintenance of Serial ATA storage devices. An understanding of current interfaces is useful, but not necessary.

• Explain the goals and objectives of Serial ATA and the Serial ATA working group
• Understand the Serial ATA architecture
• Learn details and functions of the physical, link, and transport layers
• Explore encoding and primitives in Serial ATA
• Understand interface power and power management
• Explore the future of Serial ATA and the Serial ATA II extensions

Demos will show and analyze captured SATA traffic.  Examples include:

• Device recognition
• Capturing and analyzing bidirectional traffic
• Handshaking
• Capturing and examining frames
• FISes
• Primitives in data transfer